The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica

by John Calvin Batchelor

  Wild Drumrul asked, what killers? Christmas Muir laughed, pleased that he had scared us, and told of the killer whales, thirty feet long, really large dolphins, that preyed in packs upon anything living or dead above or beneath the ice pack; that was in the Antarctic Circle, he said, and need not worry us on South Georgia.

  Wild Drumrul spoke my mind, asking, what was it like on the pack? Christmas Muir started to joke, let Peggs answer soberly, “It makes a man want to sit down and quit. Jes’ quit.”

  The pack had the same effect on South Georgia. The people of Gaunttown withdrew inside themselves. The only warmth seemed one’s own heart, but then, even the pulse rate slows in the ice and dark, as if frazil ice were forming in the blood. It had been dreary before; with the pack sealing us from open water, it became morbid. By the middle of July, winter upon us, the siege was complete, a white desert for at least one hundred miles to the northwest, perhaps fifty to the northeast. The ships in Cumberland Bay were in continual jeopardy from the ice islands that spun by. If one of them had turned with the current and loomed down on Gaunttown, it could have crushed everything afloat, perhaps more. One ice island, fifty miles long and five wide, did ram the windward shore about forty miles north of Gaunttown, sending rumbles through the ridge each time the current heaved it up against the underwater rocks. It was fanciful to imagine, though there were those that did, a fleet of those monsters closing on South Georgia, horn-tipped and ninety miles long, to gouge away our ark of hornstone.

  The melancholy of being icebound wore easiest on the sealers, like Christmas Muir and Peggs, wore hardest on the families. Elephant Frazer ordered strict rationing, confiscated several private stockpiles, arrested and imprisoned some black marketeers, for fear that the pack would not fully recede with the next summer’s heat, might return for the next twelve years as in the sealers’ tale. That was not credible, neither were the black-ice islands that emerged from the pack in July.

  “I knew’d it, I mostly did,” said Christmas Muir. “It’s that Satan’s Seat. I told ye, matey. Ye can still hear it growlin’ if ye got ears like mine, underwater like, them black giants, like pieces of Hell, I tell ye, and don’t forget that ram’s head. Him’s got notions, bad ’uns.”

  I accompanied Germanicus on a march north soon after, to inspect the fort that had been built to guard the main pass through the island, thirty miles northwest of Gaunttown. Germanicus regretted the excessive precautions the Volunteers demanded against the beasties, the plague, the unseen, and was unusually disconsolate about the future. We camped off a humpbacked ridge west of the central mountain range, in a shepherd’s hut, that, because of the pass, gave us a good view to the southwest. On the first clear morning, we took a work break to have a look at the black ice, more soot-colored, really, streaked gray, black bergy bits broken off. We were too far from where they must have originated—about one thousand miles—for them to have been starkly black against the white.

  “I don’t make much of that gab about that volcano,” said Germanicus. “The Southern Ocean be as full of wild talk as whales. I grew up with it. I remember as a wee boy hearin’ Dad tell Samson where Antarctica comes from. Dad said, once upon a time, long afore, before Jesus, there was a great kingdom at the South Pole. No ice blanket then, jes’ cold and grand. It was ruled by three kings, Beach, Lunach, and Maleteur. It was filled with hairy elephants and black diamonds. The folk lived off the sea and worshiped Jehovah, like us. King Beach, loneliest of the three kings, loved an albatross and had a daughter with her. This princess weren’t beautiful, nor clever, nor good. She wanted to live with ice birds, and she hated men, mostly, except when they made love to her. She called that ‘flight.’ She taunted every young man she could because they couldn’t fly. She taunted special King Lunach’s son and King Maleteur’s son. Well, she also must have sported with them, because she had this child, a boy, soon enough. Her dad was shamed and sealed her up in a palace, a palace made of black diamonds and whalebones. He didn’t know who’d fathered his heir. He thought on his spite and decided to hold a banquet. He had the bairn cut up into meat for pies and fed them pies to the men he figured had defiled his daughter and the honor of his kingdom. They ate hearty and went out for a stroll along a glacier, as was their way with full guts. King Beach told them there what he’d done. They were angry. It weren’t because he’d made them eat a bairn in pies. That was their custom in times of famine, to eat the small and weak. They were angry because he suspected all of them when only one was guilty. They went on screamin’ at him, ‘Mod, mod, the bleddy mon be mod.’ That weren’t all of it. It happened that no one of them could admit to being the bairn’s father, since they’d all been with the princess, flying and the like. They were disgusted with themselves. They got worked up and killed King Beach and offered themselves to the princess as her husband. They understood that the man she chose was the man guilty of causing all the fuss and must be killed. The princess cursed them for eatin’ her bairn and killin’ her dad. She thought on her spite and one day called them altogether and named them all as her husband to be. This was daft, and they laughed at her stupid revenge. The princess went back to her palace of black diamonds and white bones and called upon Jehovah to avenge her. Jehovah was angry at the misery these men had caused, and granted the princess’s prayer, though she’d never prayed before. He destroyed all three kingdoms with fire and brimstone. With volcanoes, I expect. Jehovah covered the ruin with an ice sheet for eternity. Jehovah then thought on his judgment and what he’d done, made a cold and grand kingdom into a frozen ruin, and he was sorry. He promised he wouldn’t ever again send the fire and the ice to punish wickedness. He turned the men that was left into seals, the womenfolk into birds, the children into penguins, and the hairy elephants into whales. And that’s where Antarctica comes from. Dad said them elephant seals were the seafarin’ men.”

  “What was the princess’s name?” I asked.

  Germanicus laughed, clapping his sides over and over, saying, “It be a sealer’s tale, Grim. I tell ye to show ye what to take from them sealers. On the ice, a man sees things. He thinks uncommon. That tale of that volcano, Satan’s Seat, it be a sealer passin’ time.”

  “But the black ice,” I said, “if there is a volcanic range, if it is melting the ice, that might explain the ice pack pushing out this far.”

  “Black ice, black plague, no bait to me. It be black hearts that wreck us. Them, they won’t stop being feared of what happens. We must. Samson died, it happened. We lost the Falklands, it happened. The ice came, it happened. There be what the Almighty does. There be what we can do as men. We can no more know the Almighty’s ways than figure them. What we can do be to know men’s ways, and figure them, and keep them right.”

  “You mean the Volunteers?”

  “All angry men—Brackenbury, the Hospidar, Christian Rose, and that Lazarus. Like in Dad’s tale of Antarctica. Them act disgusted with themselves for what has happened. The parson, he tells ’em the Almighty be punishing us for quitting the Falklands. He says the ice is a judgment. I don’t swallow it. Too much like a sealer’s tale. The ice happened. Not that I know what might be comin’. It be wearin’ on Dad. The Hospidar be a rough one.”

  “Lazarus says when we finish the constitution, no single man can threaten our welfare. South Georgia will be a republic.”

  “So Lazarus says. Janey talks like his echo. That great number for that great good, with charity for all wee folk. True?”

  “It’s his foster-mother’s mind,” I explained. “He says her memory demands his effort. Lazarus is ashamed of what he has done. He killed a priest, I told you, and he regrets it. He says he wants to take the knife from the assassin, and the best way to do that is to make everyone become at the same time both the assassin and the assassinated. It’s a complicated business, about Sweden and America.”

  “Rich lands and warm ways,” said Germanicus. “This republic Lazarus promises, it’ll last as long as a man in that water, if ten bad men, aye, one weak m
an, takes charge. My dad be what’s between what meanness we got and killin’. Lazarus has learning, I say, learning for rich lands, not here. One God, one land, one man, one way.”

  “I respect what you say,” I said.

  “The Bible’s way,” said Germanicus.

  “Abbie hates that. She says her father twists things.”

  “She has cause,” said Germanicus. “My brother was a good man. He would’ve been a great one. She loved part of him. She loves part of ye. I don’t mark her for it.”

  I started to protest the confusion between me and Samson. “Ye’re yerrself. Ye’re stronger than you let on, and good, and hard. I saw ye when ye wanted yerr folk and when ye wanted revenge. I see ye now when my folk want ye to lead them through this trouble. Dad needs Grim Fiddle. He won’t say it. I say it, he needs ye.”

  “What can I do?” I did not say I was a figurehead; it would have been an insult to Germanicus, who loved me as a brother.

  “Trust my dad,” said Germanicus. “Bide yerr time.”

  “I don’t like the size of what you’re saying. My father’s friend, Israel, he told me stories too. In America there was a soldier named Nixon. He was a good man, from California, born poor, who struggled his way to university. He came back from the Second World War with high dreams, wanting to serve his people. Do you know Nixon? It doesn’t matter. He was elected to the American assembly, and then, because he was young and bold, was chosen by a great American general to be president of the assembly and second-in-command of the American Republic. Nixon trusted the general and bided his time. When he tried for the general’s job years later, he was defeated, but just barely, by another soldier from the other side of the country. Nixon was bitter for his loss. He was also angry about things in America—a war in Asia, discrimination against the Negroes, their beasties, and other matters about money. Nixon said America was losing its greatness. The Americans laughed at him, told him he was old and tired. For reasons I don’t understand, Nixon waited many more years and was then elected president of America. By then he really was old and tired, and didn’t believe in anything but himself. He tried to make America into what he had wanted it to be when he was young. He ignored the laws of the Republic and degraded the politics of democracy, like majority rule. He wrecked the young people who wanted to serve America with their high dreams in their time in their way. Nixon chased men like my father and Israel into exile. Nixon was hard, and full of vengeance. It made him weak. If he had trusted his own people, and trusted the laws of the Republic, I might not be here right now.”

  “Ye don’t trust my dad?” said Germanicus, who did not evidence to me that he cared much for my story of Nixon the tyrant. Telling it had made me sad, thinking of Israel.

  I sighed. “I owe your dad everything. It’s not trust. Lazarus says I am the people’s servant, not their master, and neither is your father.”

  “And what are ye if we ask ye to be our master?”

  “That would be more for you than me, Germanicus.”

  “Nay, nay, I have my ways. Out there, on the sea, that’s for me. You have the learning, and the strength, and they love ye.”

  I was not turned by his charm. I teased him that he was the Frazer heir, and it was his destiny to rule South Georgia if it was any man’s. Germanicus stood firm. I did not want an argument, added, “We disagree. I need your help to get Lazarus’s constitution accepted. That way every man, and woman, can speak for their own ways. Trust law, like Lazarus says, not men.”

  Germanicus pointed at the black-ice islands and spoke the last word that day. “I trust what I can see and hear. I can’t see that volcano. And I can’t hear the law. I’ll trust a man, and a man I know at that, and my advice to ye be to do the same. Trust yerr master. Talk be ice, it melts in anger.”

  I brooded on Germanicus’s words. He had as little faith in republicanism as did the Hospidar. They all believed in what Lazerus’s books called absolutism, “one God, one land, one man, one way,” what is really kingship without the onus of primogeniture. The crucial disagreement among South Georgia’s patriots was not over form of government; it was over who should succeed Elephant Frazer. Germanicus had as much told me that he and his young comrades wanted me as their next master. The Hospidar wanted himself. This was not sophisticated political science. It was crude, antiquated, vulnerable, defeatist in its way. I was sympathetic. It proceeded from their disillusionment and stoutheartedness. The South Georgians saw themselves caught between the failure of modern republican states to maintain enlightenment in the face of man-made catastrophes (famine, war, rebellion) and their own imminent failure to maintain a marginal existence as an abandoned colony in the face of natural catastrophes. How could they reasonably be expected to embrace yet another republican scheme when the British Parliament had failed them completely? Their desire for absolutism was an anachronism, an insult to reason. Yet for them republicanism was ungainly, untrustworthy, an insult to their commonsensical instinct for survival. The young patriots were willing to accommodate their desire by reaching for a new master who was from outside the community and who was endowed with what they thought were extraordinary powers—Grim Fiddle. I felt trapped by my discernment; I was puzzled as to whether Germanicus and his comrades were pragmatic or simpleminded.

  One night that winter I asked Lazarus for help understanding the South Georgians. It was just after we had adjourned another poorly attended, acrimonious Assembly debating the articles in Lazarus’s constitutional draft. We sat side by side behind the podium in a dimly lit and empty chamber, the wind outside like a woeful chorus.

  “Slaves are stubborn,” said Lazarus, tapping his pen, splattering squid ink. Lazarus had aged, grown heavier, with deep lines on the unscarred part of his copper face that made him appear less rusted than weathered, like iron at sea. Marriage and fatherhood had tempered him, had also made him mordantly earnest. He w-as thirty years old, proud, cool-hearted, able, fast. “The condition of slavery makes one intrinsically conservative. Don’t change, you think, it will make it worse. These people have inherited the remains of the ruinous British imperial system that kept them slaves for generations—absentee landlordism, mercantile exploitation, like w-hat Ireland, the Americas, India, Africa, and Australia threw off in the twentieth century. Because they’re alive, they think that system was stable. They try to mimic it with despotic rule and oligarchical secrecy. We know better. What they have now is entropic and doomed. The beasties in the camp aside, old Frazer is a benevolent despot. He’s well-meaning, blunders on, his authority weakened every time he must judge between factions. His major weakness is that he can make no sensible provision for succession. They don’t see it. They expect another hero will emerge magically to lead them. That’s what they think you are. It doesn’t happen that way. The history of despotism is clear: The legacy of a strong ruler is a weak one. The weak despot will leave behind a strong one, but the transition will be chaotic and bloody. The best way to break the cycle—tyranny, anarchy, tyranny—is to provide the people with a means to determine their own destiny. That’s what we’re doing, Grim, leveling the highs of benevolent despotism, raising the lows of draconian burglary, while people like you and Germanicus develop confidence to rule by democracy, assembly, committee, debate, consensus.”

  I told Lazarus I liked how scientific he made it sound. I also asked him why what he said had not worked in Sweden and America; I added that Israel had told me that republicanism in the hands of bullies—Germanicus’s ten bad men—becomes mediocre subsistence for the common people and unbounded luxury for the ruling class, and that whenever a dissident group challenged the rulers, it was isolated and corrupted, or if not corrupted, destroyed.

  “It can look that way,” said Lazarus. “Your Israel had a sharp wit. It misled him. What he said is true only if the people participate in their own degradation. Sweden and the United States are gigantic models. They might distort what I can say. I’ll try. Plato, I’ve read him to you, he thought a good state had
limits of size. South Georgia approximates his ideal new state, Magnesia, in that it is intimate, modest, moralistic, nonpoetic, cut off—meaning it’s free from accidental invasion. We have problems, they’re solvable. Virtue is possible here. It might have once been possible in America. No longer. America’s Republic failed not because the philosophy of republicanism is flawed, rather because the white men who wrote the constitution were flawed and afraid of the will of the people their work enfranchised. They created a new man, free, ambitious, scientific, then came to see him as a monster. They released a truth—that all people are created equal—and then saw they could not contain it. The truth has no master. Over the following two hundred years the Republic thrived because of that masterless truth. Yet, yet, the continual yearning for universal suffrage, when combined with the fact that the population of the nation became increasingly nonwhite, led the white masters to conclude they were cursed by their own ancestors’ accidental, philosophical genius. They wanted to remain more than equal in a country in which they had become a distinct minority. So the white masters, Israel’s ruling class, alienated people from the power to assemble and vote. It’s easily done—intimidation of a free press, telling people they are powerless to change their fate, confusing the opposition with the circus of party politics. America became a republic in name only. Actually, it was, is, a despotism, the president elected with less than a majority of those that vote, which number was itself always less than a majority of those eligible to vote. The president spoke for himself and his gang, and then eccentrically. He didn’t have a majority mandate and he knew it, so he acted the sly prince, appeals to the godhead, manifest destiny, dreams, the Red aggressor. That was your Nixon. He was not much more than what we have in old Frazer, an appointed despot.”

  I paused, saw something, then spoke more to please Lazarus than myself. “Then America failed as a republic because it could not trust the beasties it attracted and enfranchised. Enfranchised?”